Speaking of the sensor, we got a chance to do a brief comparison between the A99 and Sony's RX1 compact that packs the same full-frame CMOS. As you can see in our sampleshot, the sensor does its job regardless of form factor -- you'd be hard pressed to determine which pictures were produced with the DSLR and which came from the compact camera.
Even with the company's auto-enhance option turned off (our whole sample gallery was shot this way), the software will automatically choose where to blur things out to deliver more visually appealing imagery at lower resolutions.